"You chose well, good citizen," Douglas had told her his first night in the cave so many years ago. "This is basement rock, solid basalt." He had affectionately slapped the stony bulwarks beside him. "Part of the bones of this tormented earth, established millennia ago and not likely to change no matter how these time storms shift. Until old Earth bounces all the way back to the Archeozoic Age, these rocks will endure. Mark my words!"
She had, until Douglas had tried to turn the then residents against her, and gain dominion over her cave. Ruthlessly she had left him, and them, behind in the next shift. She had missed him sorely for his many skills and his logical solutions to the practical problems of their curious existence. She chose to believe that his theoretical assessments of their condition, such as the durability of the hills, were as accurate as his practical applications.
Once more the hills gave her comfort and assurance. Serenely now, she could turn to see what had transpired around her and in the valley. The rivers, seen through a thin or young forest, were in residence and their banks unmarred by buildings of any description. Those rivers had watered her father's prosperous holding, obtained from the governor of the colony, rich farmlands, coveted by his neighbors. Well, she was no longer chattel-goods, unable to guide her own destiny and manage her inheritance. She wondered how those gentlemen, her ardent suitors, had fared the night of the first time storm, when they had chased her into these hills. And fortuitously into the cave, which had proved the one sure shelter in this time-heaved world.
A faint breeze ruffled her hair, a breeze wet and clean of unfamiliar taints. She saw no stunted or exceptional trees. In this young forest, she recognized elm, birch, chestnut, oak, ash, and further down the hills, beeches and willows. A comforting undercurrent of noise drifted to her ears, the conversations of birds, animals, and insects. Into what era Earth had passed, Chloe could not guess, for the mountain forests of the American eastern coast had stood undisturbed for centuries before England had established her colonies there. This particular section had been alternately called Upper New York State, Lesser Metropolis, Eastern Sector, and Red Region and had been relatively unscathed by urban development, Douglas had said, until the late twenty-fifth century.
Twenty-five centuries seemed incredible to Chloe, a woman of the eighteenth. Yet, in some society future to the twenty-fifth, the fabric of time itself had been ruptured, causing the great distortion shift storms during which the planet was flung from one point to another along the fifth dimension. Or so Issaro had asserted. The storm-bedraggled Chloe of the eighteenth century might not have comprehended such a theory, but the Chloe who assessed this new period of relative stability could accept that interpretation after all the marvels she had seen during her twelve years of time-faring.
Chloe moved from the cave's overhang. This would be a welcome stop, though autumn would have been more beneficial in terms of replenishing supplies of herbs, grains, fruits, and nuts. Automatically she bunched her skirt in one hand and began to gather dead branches from the clearing. Firing was always in short supply in the cave, and she despised idleness in anyone above any other flaw and would not tolerate it in herself, either. It took her no time to gather the first load, which she took back to the cave, stacking it quietly and quickly in the bins. No one was disturbed by her slight noises. They were all exhausted by the rigors of the last shift, though it hadn't been a bad one, and they would sleep until she woke them. That was all to the good. Chloe valued this time of solitude to collect her thoughts and plan how best to use a new shift.
She went back to her alcove and gathered up her quilts. As she spread the patchworks on convenient branches, she hoped there would be game abroad this time. Meat was the most urgent requirement. She would have the able men set snares and hunt. The women could fish and look for spring berries. She had the feeling that they might be here for a goodly while. Time enough to explore and see what other benefits might be derived.
She took a pail from the supply shelves, noting that some of the precious implements had not been stored properly. She'd have a word with Rayda. Born in a high-technology society and loath to dirty her hands or stretch her muscles in honest labor, Rayda had few skills to recommend her to Chloe. She had been in the cave now for five shifts and could be sloughed off as unsuitable. Chloe did not believe in undue benevolence with respect to castaways. She exploited whatever talents they had and generally managed to retain the artifacts with which they came encumbered. Bitter experience had taught her to be ruthless in maintaining her authority and domination. Wisely she had remained silent on the score that she always experienced a warning of the onset of a time storm. With that unique faculty, she had been able to decide which of her companions of the moment passed the storm in the safety of the cave. Fortunately she had never touched in the same time twice, a mercy of which she was entirely sensible.
So, she would dispense with Rayda at the conclusion of this interval. A simple ruse at the appropriate time would suffice. The woman had no orientation skill at all.
Would it ever be possible to have a stable complement in the cave, Chloe wondered, each occupant possessing skills useful in their transitions and valuable in various of the civilizations in which the time storms deposited them? Harmonious personalities with no sudden inexplicable ambitions to usurp her prerogatives: a decent assembly of folk all dedicated to surviving decently in this one refuge on a planet utterly abandoned by time's order? The best of all possible worlds?
As Chloe wound her way through the trees in search of early berries, she smiled at her conceit. Issaro had suggested, on several occasions, that there had to be other refuges on the planet, other stable areas on the Earth's crust or under it. Chloe had scoffed at the notion of trying to contact other survivors, though occasionally the technological equipment to do so had been available to her. Speaking to people she had never met across vast leagues of continent or ocean seemed a futile effort to her. What value would such contact have? How could one possibly pit mere scores of men against this ultimate disaster? She could not envisage that the combined effort of even the most substantial numbers of folk could affect or alter the cataclysm that had over-taken the world. If, as Issaro had maintained, some future scientific experimentation had ruptured time, then all the efforts of the past could not mend that fracture. The wiser course was to endure the phenomenon in reasonable safety and comfort.
Chloe broke from the thin forest into a clearing. Goose-berries grew in profusion on the bushes. Chloe ate greedily of the yellow-green ovals, letting the juices moisten tissues dried by the uncertainties of the time shift.
She had nearly filled her pail when a sudden heavy rustling in the undergrowth alerted her to the presence of some animal. She crouched behind the screen of bushes, observing that she was upwind of the creature. For several fearful moments, she wondered what horrible denizen might emerge. Her relief was double as she recognized the distinctive snout and furry bulk of a bear - not a large one and, judging by the way it gobbled berries, recently awakened from its hibernation.
Any bear could be dangerous, so Chloe eased her way out of the bushes and walked swiftly back to the cave. Would she rouse the men to chase the bear? No, a thin one with winter-mangy fur would be of little value. And a large predator would provide Michael and Destry with an excuse to use firearms. Still, the presence of a bear augured the likelihood of other familiar, and useful, species. Again, she stifled the wish that the season were more advanced and the bear fat enough to be worth hunting. Perhaps they would remain here through the entire summer and be able to gamer the autumn's harvest.